how could you not know he was a ghost

In the restaurant. she says "Happy anniversary". Of course, she's just talking to herself because it was their favorite restaurant/anniversary. But the way that it was shot made it seem like she was giving him the silent treatment and then threw in the one line to guilt trip him like he forgot. It was very effective. Also, it is possible for couples that are still married to be really distant and avoid each other while still living under the same roof.

But this makes his wife come off like a cold hearted b**ch because of the circumstances. I mean in the first viewing the audience assumes he survives the shooting. So the aftermath is her treating her husband like crap for something out of his control?

You were born in 1992, of course you know he's a ghost. The average 30 year old going to see this movie in 1999 was not expecting the movie to have a twist and in most cases didn't expect any movie in general to have a twist since it wasn't a convention at that time.

After 1999, nearly every big movie now has a "clever" twist and the internet has made it impossible for audiences to surprised by such things, but at the time all this stuff was just word of mouth.

I had a friend who saw it in the theater and figured it out in the anniversary dinner scene.

I did not. The convention of filming worked well for the movie. In the movie you just accept the scene that starts when the director has it start with the characters already in it and ends when the director has it end. Characters don't have to come and go. They're just there. So when you see the mother and the psychologist sitting in the living room when Cole walks in, you assume they've met before and she's arranged for him to be there. Because in so many previous movies or shows, that's exactly how it's presented. A character walks into the room with the doctor already being there. When you see the psychologist being shot and the next time is much later and he's better, you accept that because you've seen skipped passages of time like that before in movies.

The very artificial way scenes are constructed worked well for this movie and was brilliantly used because everything we saw that was the dead psychologist were scenes that we had all seen many times before as a regular convention of movies. So he used the familiar to hide the twist. And, for most of us, he used the familiar to hide the twist very well.




my website -- http://maggieameanderings.com/Archive.htm

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Wow you're obnoxious

i take it taht 1992 is your date of birth so you didnt watch this masterpiece at the movies like most of us but much later on dvd or tv. and since its such a famous movie and the twist by now commom knowledge - sure you knew about it.
but it is still an amazingly crafted film with a wonderful pacing and atmosphere and gripping character portrayals by the three lead actors. not even close to "crap".
try to watch it again with an open mind - you'll see what i mean

I'm so glad this movie wasn't hyped for me at all. I was in high school and went to a lot of movies back then so just ended up seeing it. It was such a cool experience that would have been awful if everyone told me how great it was, or that there was a twist, or whatever.

I actually liked that I didn't figure it out ahead of time. Made the movie even better. So sucks for you I guess.
I don't know when you actually watched the movie but to anyone who doesn't see movies like this in theaters, it's much easier to figure out the twists. Between word of mouth, parodies, other movies copying it, twist are a lot easier to see coming. Try watching the Usual Suspects now. Bet you could see that coming too.